


Buried

by divaofdespair



Series: Autopsy [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ana not taking any of his shit from beyond the grave, Angst, Jack being Jack, M/M, Soldier: 76 not caring, sad dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:13:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8376916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divaofdespair/pseuds/divaofdespair
Summary: A dead man hears a ghost.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Okay, maybe it's only from beyond the grave as far as Jack's concerned. What he doesn't know is that every time he hears her voice, it's because Ana's "Jack's about to fuck up" sense starts to tingle and she just gets the Disappointed Mom Look so hard that he's feeling it from across the globe.)
> 
> I have a giant document full of ideas for pictures and comics I want to draw in my free time and instead I ended up using it to write a B side to Exhumed. Yep.

It had taken days after the explosion in Zürich for Jack to hear that Gabriel's body hadn't been recovered.

He'd been in a shitty bar (he couldn't begin to guess what country it might have been in; between the shock and having crossed and recrossed so many borders, he'd managed to lose track), the type where no one would ask questions about a man in a mask. The holoscreen in the corner was broadcasting the same thing that was on in every bar because it was on every channel: News about the explosion.  
"Sources indicate that the bodies of Strike-Commander Jack Morrison and former Strike-Commander Gabriel Reyes have yet to be found," droned a woman with blonde hair and a red, red dress.  
_That son of a bitch **would** be too stubborn to die_ , he'd thought. He'd wanted it to make him bitter and angry, but all he felt was a pang of fondness (and, even more offensively, hope). There had never been many promises between them—it seemed pointless, considering that every time one of them left was as likely as not to be the last time they'd see each other alive—but Gabriel had once said he'd always find his way home to Jack. The blond had clung to that; played it back to himself in his head like a mantra every time Gabe had so much as been late for a check-in.  
So Jack had patched into their old channel. Truth be told, over the years he'd mostly forgotten about it; between tinnitus and the natural decline of his hearing (God, he hated being old), he couldn't even hear the white noise of open air anymore.

He remembered it immediately in the New Mexico desert, when a ghost whispered the name of a dead man into the old soldier's ear.

Initially, he told himself it couldn't have been Gabriel. Gabriel's voice had always been deep and strong ( _Gorgeous_ , he caught himself thinking, and immediately banished it back to where it had come from with absolute prejudice), and this voice was strained and thin. It was so fragile that the soldier wasn't entirely convinced he'd actually heard it. Even so, he froze, unable to decide between turning the communicator off and responding.

And then the voice came back.

The soldier could say from experience that he'd rather take a slug to the heart over every single word he was hearing. Gabriel was still _in_ that thing, hurting. "I miss you," he was telling Jack, "and that hurts more than everything else."  
Jack's arm jerked up, fingers trembling as they hovered over the button to open his microphone. But Gabriel lapsed into an old story, and there was a little bit of that California way of talking too fast that he'd always slipped into whenever he talked long enough to do so. This wasn't the wraith taunting the old soldier. This was Gabriel Reyes, reaching for Jack Morrison.

He did remember that night: he'd dreamt it had been Gabriel in that building covering him, Gabriel's pained screams filtering into Jack's ear until they were abruptly cut off, Gabriel's empty seat next to him on the transport back to base. Gabriel's sister Fernanda's wail of anguish over the phone instead of Fareeha's tears of grief on Jack's coat.  
And when he woke, Gabriel's side of the bed had been empty.  
Panic had seized Jack for a moment, but the faint chill of night air that came in through the cracked door to the patio—and the smell of cigarette smoke that it carried with it—grounded him. He remembered something feeling sickeningly close to relief coming over him as he told himself it was Ana—not Gabriel—who was gone.  
He'd gotten out of bed and padded down to the kitchen, intending to make a late night snack, or maybe get a glass of water: something, anything, that was normal. Instead, he'd found himself collapsing into a chair at the breakfast table, staring at an old picture. _For fuck's sake, Jack, just talk to him already_ , he could hear her saying (in the same tone she'd said it in every time, all the countless times those exact words had left her mouth). Even from a photograph, he felt like Ana was staring right through him. And when he'd looked up to see Gabriel in the doorway, there had been so much hurt in those pretty brown eyes that Jack had wanted nothing more than to smile for him in hopes that Gabriel would smile back.  
So he'd tried. But the look that he actually got from Gabriel in response just made him feel worse.  
"You know," Jack had said, needing to fill the silence with something besides Gabriel's footsteps as he crossed the kitchen to sit down at the table, "When I was a kid, I was real close with my grandparents. I think I must have been seven, maybe eight when my grandfather died.  
"I came home from school, and my mom sat me down at the kitchen table. Said, 'Johnny, sweetie, Papaw died today.' I was so upset that I just got up and bolted out of the house. Didn't even know where I wanted to go, I just couldn't be there." Jack had smiled ruefully and looked down at the photo in his hands. He turned it over, sighed, turned it over again, and placed it face-up on the table. His gaze remained on it, eyes locked with a different brown pair than usual. "But I was a kid, you know? So I started taking off through the cornfield, but I ended up just," he grimaced a little at the admittance he was about to make, "crying with my face in the dirt.  
"Eventually, mom came out lookin' for me. And she lays down next to me, right on the ground. She goes, 'do you know why we get sad when people die, Johnny?' while she's wiping snot and dirt off my face." Jack had looked up from the photo to find Gabriel's eyes fixed on his.  
"Then she says, 'our hearts are like rooms, and everyone we love takes up space in them. The more you love someone, the more space you give them. But sometimes in life the people you let live in your heart have to leave, and when they do, that space is going to be empty. Trouble is, it's going to be really easy to fill that emptiness with sadness. There'll be times when that's all you can fill it with. But when that happens, you just gotta' remember that there's only as much sadness in saying goodbye to someone as there was happiness in knowing them.'"  
Gabriel was quiet for a moment as his eyes lowered from Jack's to the picture on the table. "I just came down here to tell you to get your ass back to bed, you sappy maricón."  
And Jack hadn't been able to stop the smallest laugh from escaping him. But as it bubbled up from his throat, Gabriel had finally smiled.

A life later, the soldier's fingers relaxed. The arm dropped. Gabriel could look for Jack all he wanted. And he could come up as emptyhanded as the rescuers sent to Switzerland, because Jack Morrison was dead. The man hearing this was no one, just an old soldier doing a job that needed to be done ( _like Gabriel used to_ , something in him mused, and the soldier quickly stamped that thought right out of his mind).

He wanted nothing more than to close the channel and never reopen it, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Jack had always known when Gabriel just needed him to listen, and goddamnit, he'd always _tried_ , even if he had also always been terrible at it.  
It was a good thing Jack was dead, because Jack probably have punched himself in the side of the head in his haste to open his microphone. He'd probably have cooed honey-sweet words over what Gabriel was trying to say, desperate to soothe Gabriel's mood so that he wouldn't have to face the fact that something was wrong.

"Fuck, Jack, you were so beautiful, I didn't tell you that enough, I didn't say I love you enough..."

The old soldier's guts tied themselves into familiar knots. As much as he'd wanted to, he had never been able to put his and Gabriel's problems over those of the entire world. And by the time they'd unshouldered enough of the burden to share a breath between them, there had been so many things boiling over that there was no way to save enough of them.

"I never know what I'm gonna' do when I see you, sunshine. It fuckin' scares me. This thing I am most of the time, it hates you, it wants you dead so I got nothin' else to hang on to, and that's my fault, too, I have to think about you and starve it just so I can breathe sometimes, this is all my fault and I'm sor—"

Gabriel had dug dangerously deep. Jack's tears were in his eyes when the transmission cut out, and he wasn't sure how long they'd been falling down his face. He tore his mask away, quickly scrubbed them with a worn tactical glove. _Just the ramblings of a madman_ , the old soldier told himself. _Doesn't mean shit_. But there was an ache in his lips and a weight in his chest that wouldn't leave. Jack wanted to save Gabriel.

Maybe Jack and Gabriel had never had a fair shot. But even when you're the world's Golden Boy, sometimes life's not fucking fair. _Besides,_ he told himself, _the truth is that we both just kept fucking up until we managed to get each other killed. And death is death, not a second goddamned chance._

Jack was dead. Gabriel was beyond saving.

The old soldier replaced his mask and picked up his pulse rifle, its weight reassuring in his arms.

He had a job to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly this kind of just turned out to be Jack using Gabriel as an excuse to be wistful and nostalgic about using Gabriel as an excuse to be wistful and nostalgic back when Gabriel was a big enough sack of fluff to let him.


End file.
